PENALTY BASED HAMILTONIAN EQUATIONS FOR THE DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF CONSTRAINED MECHANICAL SYSTEMS

We propose in this paper a new penalty based Hamiltonian description o f the equations of motion of mechanical systems subject to both holono mic and non-holonomic constraints. This method shows a clear advantage over the previously proposed acceleration based formulation, in terms of numerical efficiency and constraint stabilization. We also show th at the new approach is more efficient and robust than both the Lagrang e's multiplier method with Baumgarte stabilization, and the use of a m inimum set of coordinates. In addition, this new method is robust unde r singular positions and in the presence of redundant constraints.